The last time I ran 7 miles was back in December February (I went back through my logs and realized that I had forgotten about a run I did in Feb). I hadn’t ran that long since. With the New York Colon Cancer Challenge 15K coming up next week I need to do a long run. My plan was to do a long slow run of 7 miles at a 9:00 pace. Ben and I went out to Jersey City for a group run.

We started out from the Grove St. PATH station and ran to Liberty State Park. The park had been severely affected by Hurricane Sandy. Portions of the park are still closed. The waterfront route where all of the 5ks in Liberty State Park are held is still closed. From the park, we ran toward the Newport waterfront. One of the runners left us before we turned off for the Newport waterfront. This section had also been closed because of Hurricane Sandy. I hadn’t seen this section in several months, so it was nice to run on it again. Runtastic (and frankly any other GPS-based system) is a little wonky in this area because of all the tall buildings. The recorded running route and times and are a little off because Runtastic had no idea where we were. When we were about to leave the Newport waterfront, the other runner left us to head home in Jersey City. This left Ben and I to run home.

Because of the wonky GPS error, Ben and I had to correct for distance and time. I was really surprised when Ben calculated that our overall average pace was 8:34. This seems really fast to me. I was tired, but I thought I would have had more taken out of me at the end of 7 miles. Ben used this as an opportunity to say, “See, I told you that you’d run better if you didn’t go all out like a crazy woman in the beginning. You gas yourself and then you have nothing left for the end.” I ran much faster than I intended. This pace was more my tempo speed than a slow run, but I felt great. I guess running negative splits work and psychologically it’s easier to keep up a faster pace in a group than by yourself.